


why mess up a good thing

by otachi



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-24 23:51:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13822059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/otachi/pseuds/otachi
Summary: Jared and Evan go to a college party, because they’re college students now, and that’s what college students are meant to do.





	why mess up a good thing

They’re at a party. Evan doesn’t know  _ why  _ they’re at a party, because neither he nor Jared go to parties, but tonight is, apparently, the exception to the rule. He kind of hates it. He tries to convey as much in the glare he directs towards Jared, who’s stood across the room from him, holding a can of beer in his hand and trying to look like he’s comfortable being there. He shoots him a sloppy thumbs-up with his free hand in reply. He’s not entirely sure why Jared insisted that they couldn’t just hang out together. It’s obvious neither of them is going to be making any friends tonight. Evan can barely approach people at school, let alone in a situation so horrendously alien to him as this one, and Jared, for all his confidence, isn’t exactly a socialite either. Especially when he’s been drinking. He usually just gets kind of embarrassing. 

Evan’s not sure he’ll be able to manoeuvre Jared out through the crowds if he  _ actually _ gets drunk. He’s really hoping it’s not going to come to that.

Jared seems to have realised the futility of his attempt to ‘meet new and interesting people, Evan,’ because he’s rather sullenly making his way through the swathes of people. Evan hides a grin behind the can of coke he’s holding. He’s got nothing against drinking, necessarily, but it’s loud, and he’s easily overwhelmed, and he’s not going to let Jared keep drinking without some kind of supervision. Evan’s not very good at supervising when he’s been drinking. Hence the soft drink. 

“So,” Jared starts, once he’s finally made his way over to Evan, who’s been loitering by the doorway to the kitchen for most of the evening so far. “That went well.”

“Oh yeah,” Evan agrees, “definitely. I especially liked the part where you talked to that girl for 5 minutes straight before she realised you’d been addressing her. That was fun.”

Jared elbows him in his ribs, and Evan grimaces a little as his grip on his drink slips, watches the can fall to the floor  and tries not to think about potential stains. At least it’s a wooden floor, he thinks, rationally. At least he’d pretty much finished drinking it. It’s probably fine.

“Whoops,” Jared remarks.

Evan’s reasonably confident Jared had been hoping that would happen. He doesn’t call him out on it.

“What are we doing here, Jared?” he asks, watching the can fold and crumple in on itself underneath someone’s shoe. He knows, logically, that no-one’s going to know it was  _ his  _ can, that no-one’s going to call him up tomorrow morning, asking if he’s going to pay for the cost of resurfacing their living room, but he still feels kind of nervous looking at it.

“We’re meeting-”

“New and exciting people,” Evan finishes. He’d kind of been hoping for a little more than that. 

“Interesting,” Jared corrects.

“Okay,” Evan says, because sometimes the only way to deal with Jared is to indulge him, “but that clearly hasn’t worked out, and we’re still here, and I need a good reason not to go home, and go to bed, and sleep, like a sensible person.”

Jared shrugs. 

“Jared,” Evan starts, because he really doesn’t want to be here if he can help it, had only bothered coming in the first place because Jared had asked him to. He still feels sort of weird blowing him off, is the thing. Evan had spent so long doing whatever it was Jared had asked of him, out of a misguided fear that he’d end up losing his only sort-of-friend if he didn’t, that saying no is still difficult sometimes. Even if Jared’s at least begun to admit that they’re actual friends.

Plus he  _ likes _ spending time with Jared. He just doesn’t like parties.

“Evan,” Jared replies.

Evan feels like he might be fighting a losing battle, here. 

“We’re going to the kitchen,” he tells Jared, because if he doesn’t Jared will probably decide to wander off and try making friends again, and it’ll be embarrassing for the both of them. At least in the kitchen they can sit down, even if it’s just on the work-surfaces or something. He’s not picky, just wants to be a little further away from all the sound. It might not be deafening, but it’s getting close.

They do end up sitting on the kitchen counter, in the end, after Jared’s knocked the empty cans and bottles that had been covering it onto the tiled floor. Knocked is maybe a little harsh, Evan reasons. He  _ tried  _ to move them. The knocking was mostly an unintentional side effect of the fact that Jared had already, probably, had too much to drink. Nothing’s broken, though, so Evan considers it a success.

Evan’s right side is pressed up against the fridge, very uncomfortably, and Jared is sandwiched against his left, constantly shifting to try and stop the gas rings digging into his legs. He’s failing, from the sounds of things. It’s ridiculous. 

“So,” Jared says, once he’s mostly settled,. 

Evan isn’t quite sure what he’s meant to reply to that with. He feels like he should start talking about something Jared likes, maybe, in the hopes that it’ll keep him distracted enough to stop drinking, but he doesn’t want to be overbearing. If Jared wants to drink he can do - he’s a big boy, he can make his own decisions without Evan trying to manipulate him. Even if the manipulation might have been in his best interests. Jared can dig his own grave, if he’s so inclined.

“Cool party?” Evan asks, jokingly. 

He knows it probably wasn’t exactly what Jared had been hoping for, but he still seems to want to hang around despite that, and Evan wants to understand his reasoning. Sure, there’s free booze, and probably what remains of the snack food that’d been left out earlier, but Jared’s not had a proper conversation with anyone here aside from Evan. He’s attempted to, but most people come with company and so it’s all a bit cliquey - people will indulge Jared only as long as it takes to not then seem rude when they excuse themselves to find the rest of their friends a minute later. There’s no reason for them to hang around.

“Eh,” Jared says, wiggling his hand in an approximation of ‘so-so’, “it’s okay. Kind of exactly what I was expecting, but not exactly what I’d been hoping for. No-one here’s properly appreciating the notorious Kleinman charm.”

Evan nods. “I never understood trying to meet people at parties,” he says in reply, “like, obviously there’s a load of people around, and everyone’s better at talking, or, I guess, most people are better, when they’re drunk. But it’s so loud? Like, there’s no way you can have a proper conversation, I mean, and half of these people will probably have forgotten the evening by the time they wake up, so there’s no way they’re gonna remember you if, when all you’ve done is talk to them for like 20 minutes, maybe. It’s dumb.”

Jared pats his shoulder gently. 

Evan’s almost tempted to suggest they go outside, to take a breather where the air won’t feel so thick and cloying, before he remembers that that’s probably where all the smokers are, and it might actually be even worse. 

“This kind of sucks, actually,” Jared says, after a beat. 

Evan’s surprised he’s admitting it. He’s staring at a stain on his jeans with a frown, but looks up when Evan hasn’t said anything after a second or two. 

“We should steal a six-pack and run,” he continues. “Maybe two, but I don’t think you have the upper body strength for that. Let’s get out of here.”

And while Evan doesn’t exactly  _ approve _ of thieving, he’s also pretty sure no-one’s going to miss a single pack of beers, especially considering just how much alcohol is still, miraculously, remaining. He thinks the hosts may have overestimated people’s limits. Or he’s underestimating the rest of the guests - maybe they’ll still be going at 3 in the morning and they’ll prove him wrong. College student are kind of wildly unpredictable, he’s found. 

Evan’s too embarrassed to just walk out with a load of booze that quite obviously isn’t theirs, but Jared has no such qualms. He deposits a six-pack of lager at Evan’s feet, by the front door to the apartment, and then disappears back inside to grab more. Evan wants to tell him to wait, that he’d really only thought they were taking the one lot and that two is kind of overkill, not to mention way more noticeable, but Jared’s gone before he has time to think to stop him.

Jared returns after another couple of minutes, knocks shoulders with Evan, and then nods at him to follow along. 

They walk back to their shared dorm like that, Evan cradling a six-pack against his chest and Jared carrying one in either hand, because apparently he’d pilfered an extra two. Evan’s not letting himself think too hard about it.

It’s weird, living with Jared, but it’s not bad. They’re probably fighting less now than they did in high school, bizarrely enough, despite the fact they have to put up with each other far more regularly than they ever had before. It was unexpected. Evan hadn’t even realised they were planning on going to the same college until Jared had pointed out the acceptance letter on his desk, his scholarship grant underneath, and asked whether Evan was really planning on following him everywhere he went. 

They’d agreed to room together for the first year, at least, and then when (or if, in Evan’s case, if he’s being realistic,) they found other friends they could start to reconsider the whole accommodation situation. 

Evan doesn’t think he’d mind living with Jared for the rest of his degree, really, but, as with most things, it wasn’t really his decision. They haven’t talked about it much since moving in together, and Evan figures the longer he puts it off the more likely it is that Jared will somehow, miraculously, forget, and then Evan will at least get another year to try and find someone else who’ll put up with him before he’s kicked out. 

Jared fumbles with the keys to their apartment complex, trying, for some reason, to prove that he can get them out of his back pocket while still holding the beers. Evan lets it happen for about a minute, and then shifts the pack he’d been carrying to his side and pulls them out himself, opening the door. 

“Nice try, though,” he reassures Jared, as he follows him inside. Jared shoots him a dirty look.

They make it up to their room without much more trouble, and Evan immediately moves to collapse onto his bed, alcohol be damned. He’s tired. He wants a nap. 

He can hear Jared scoff from the doorway. 

“I’m tired,” Evan tells him, because he is. “I want a nap.”

“Too bad,” Jared says, “because we have 18 cans of beer here and I refuse to drink alone.”

Evan wants to tell Jared, politely, that there is absolutely no reason that they need to drink their stolen goods tonight, and, in fact, probably no way Jared would even be capable of consuming that amount of alcohol alone. He doesn’t think they’ll get that far  _ together _ , thinks they might actually die if they attempt it, even if they spend the rest of the evening just trying to finish the booze. But Evan is also kind of dumb, sometimes, and it’s the weekend tomorrow, and now that they’re back in their room it’s not like getting drunk with Jared is the worst possible idea ever, so he says “okay,” instead.

That’s how they end up on the floor, leant up against Evan’s bedframe and sat upon a duvet (Jared’s, he’s pretty sure), drinking shitty beer. Evan isn’t exactly a connoisseur of alcohol, and even he can tell the beer is bad. It should be miserable. It’s not. 

“We should stay roomies,” Jared tells him, once they’ve finished the first pack of lager. It’s kind of a grim business, and Evan feels like he’s already consumed way too much liquid to be reasonable. He’s never been a fan of beer. There’s just so  _ much  _ of it, like you keep expecting to have finished your glass, or can, or whatever, but it just keeps going for basically forever, and it never tastes as good as it should. Jared’s the beer guy.

“What?” Evan asks, appropriately baffled. “Why?”

If he’s pushing it Evan might say Jared seems kind of offended at the reply, but that doesn’t make any goddamn sense at all.

“Because,” Jared says, dragging out the vowels to the point that it sounds entirely ridiculous, “we’re, like, friends.” 

“Yeah, but, like. There has to be more to it than that,” Evan says, because while he’s touched by the sentiment it’s not the kind of solid reasoning he wanted to hear, especially when Jared had been so insistent on finding a different roommate for the next year when they’d first moved in together.

“What, I can’t just want to enjoy the once-in-a-lifetime experience that is going to college with my very best childhood friend?”

“I mean, no,” Evan says, because, like. No. Jared has to have an ulterior motive. He always does, even if it’s not one he consciously recognises. 

Jared hums thoughtfully, and that is, apparently, the end of their talk, because he doesn’t say anything at all for a good minute. When he does speak, again, after a particularly uncomfortable period of intense silence, Evan can’t tell if it’s meant to be an answer, or the start of an entirely new conversation.

“This is probably a really, really stupid idea,” Jared says. 

“What?” Evan gets just enough time to ask, and then Jared’s kissing him. 

It’s Jared who pulls away first, mainly because Evan has absolutely no idea what the hell is going on and so hasn’t reacted at all really. 

“Oh my god,” he says, staring at the ground and angling his body away from Evan. Evan feels way too lost to be offended. “Oh my god,” Jared says again, weakly, and then, “I am such a fucking idiot. Oh my god.”

“It’s okay?” Evan says, except it comes out as a question instead, because there’s a lot to process right now.

Jared buries his face in his hands and makes a pained noise. Maybe Evan’s meant to comfort him, except that Jared was the one who kissed him first, and Evan hadn’t thought that it had been  _ that  _ awful.

“You’ve had a lot to drink,” Evan tries anyway. He’s not sure what the protocol for this kind of thing is.

“You’re, like,  _ so  _ straight,” Jared says. It feels a little like he’s having his own conversation, on another plane of existence, maybe, where Evan doesn’t exist and isn’t trying to help. “You’re the straightest guy ever.”

“I’m bi,” Evan tells him. 

Jared seems to register that, at least. 

“What the fuck, Evan?” 

“Super bi,” Evan continues, because he’s starting to realise he may also be a little tipsy. 

Jared looks kind of like a dying fish, he thinks idly, and reaches for another beer. He needs to be at least 60% more drunk to have this talk. Maybe more. 

“I’m gay,” Jared says. 

“Yep,” Evan says in reply, because Jared tells him as much almost daily, whenever any vaguely attractive guys so much as look in his direction. 

Jared starts fiddling with the corner of the duvet they’re still sitting on. Evan moves to bump his side, gently, to try and non-verbally explain that even though he doesn’t understand what’s happening things are still mostly ok. His vision swims a little when he moves, though, so he ends up just kind of resting his head against Jared’s shoulder while he waits for things to stabilise instead. 

Jared doesn’t say anything, but even Evan, with his wobbly vision, can see he’s blushing. 

“You okay?” Evan asks, because he’s a good friend.

“Are  _ you  _ okay? I mean, that was-” Jared tries, before cutting himself off and sighing, very softly. “It never happened, yeah Evan?”

“That seems counterproductive.”

Evan’s not deliberately trying to be a pain, but it  _ does  _ seem like exactly the kind of problem they don’t need. Miscommunication is pretty much their biggest failing, as a duo, and if he doesn’t get some kind of closure he knows the whole thing’s going to blow up in their faces. It’s also pretty good fun getting to see Jared genuinely flustered, but that is most definitely a secondary concern of Evan’s and not at all the reason he’s debating this with him. 

“I kissed you,” Jared manages, after an absurd number of false starts. 

Evan nods, and Jared makes a noise he can only interpret as being one of incredulity.

“How are you so okay with this?”

Evan shrugs. “Why’d you do it?” he asks, instead of answering the question, head still on Jared’s shoulder, even though his vision cleared up a while ago. 

Jared is, like Evan, very good at avoiding things, and so remains silent. Evan would call him out on it if he hadn’t just very obviously avoided a question too.

“You didn’t have to, like, if you were trying to convince me to stay your roommate that was kind of a weird way of going about it,” Evan says. 

“It wasn’t - that’s not why,” Jared responds, immediately, sounding almost defensive. “I wouldn’t.”

Evan nods against his shoulder. He’s doing a lot of that, mainly because he has no idea what else he’s meant to do.

“I just,” Jared says, and then stops.

Evan lifts his head and tries to catch Jared’s eyes. The whole situation feels unbelievably awkward, and Evan isn’t entirely sure why, or if it needs to be, really. Jared can just admit it was a mistake, apologise, say he had too much to drink - instead he won’t even look at Evan. 

“Jared,” Evan tries, and this, at least, gets Jared to turn towards him, though Evan can tell his eyes are focused on a point somewhere behind him and not actually on Evan. Evan pauses, and, before he has time to let himself think too hard about it, reaches out a hand and places it on Jared’s shoulder. 

Jared frowns at the wall. It’s not exactly encouraging.

“Stop me if I’ve gotten entirely the wrong idea here,” Evan tells him, and then leans forward to kiss him, because he’s very good at doing terribly regrettable things on impulse. 

Jared doesn’t move for a second. Evan’s about to pull away, ashamed and guilty for making such a horribly misinformed assumption, and then Jared, very hesitantly, starts kissing him back.

It’s kind of objectively horrible. Jared’s glasses are in the way, and they both taste of the shitty beer they’ve been drinking, and despite Jared’s claims to the contrary neither of them are very experienced with this kind of thing. It’s a bit of a disaster. Maybe a lot. But then Evan looks up at Jared, once he’s pulled away, and he’s wearing an expression of confusion and barely-disguised glee, bright red and still kind of struggling to make eye contact. 

His lips quirk up at the sides every few seconds like he’s trying to stop himself smiling. 

Evan is a little enamoured. 

“Was that, I hope that was okay?” he asks, trying not to stumble over too many of the words, “I mean, god, I shouldn’t have, have assumed, you know, that, that that meant, but-”

“It was okay,” Jared says, soft and warm, and now Evan feels like maybe he should be the one burying his head in his hands and making pained noises. “I mean obviously your technique leaves a little something to be desired,” he continues, and Evan doesn’t need to see him to know he’s smiling now. He’s kind of the worst, he thinks. 

“Shut up, Jared.” 

Evan’s sure he sounds ridiculous - he feels ridiculous, feels warm and floaty and light and excessively pleased with the situation. Jared, to his credit, doesn’t make anymore jokes. He seems kind of distracted, smiling at nothing at all. Evan would probably be doing the same if he could stop staring at Jared.

“C’mere,” Evan says, reaching out a hand, because he has no idea what this is meant to mean for either of them, what, if anything, this is going to change, but he feels so untethered he’s worried he’ll float away if he doesn’t have something to ground him. 

Jared glances at the proffered hand, and then pulls Evan into a hug, burying his face in the crook of Evan’s neck and curling his hands up in the fabric of his shirt. Evan stops thinking, briefly, smitten.

He hugs Jared back, of course. 

“What is this?” Evan asks, laughing.

“Just,” Jared says, “just shut up for a second. Just give me a minute. I’m processing.”

Evan doesn’t say anything for a moment, and then Jared, very quietly, like he’s not sure he wants to be heard, “is this, like, a one off thing?”

“I mean, that’s not, I hadn’t. Been planning on it being a one off thing. Um. If you. Well.”

Jared pulls back, just far enough that he can meet Evan’s eyes. His gaze softens. 

“You’re kind of an idiot, Evan,” he says. “I’ve had a crush on you for, like, the past 3 years.”

Evan tries to say something,  _ anything _ , but his mind is really not functioning properly right now and he comes up short, awkwardly fumbling for the words he can’t find. He kisses Jared again instead, because, well. 

Jared has to pull away after a minute and tell him to stop smiling, and Evan would feel embarrassed about the lighthearted reprimand, except he can’t seem to focus on anything but the fact that he’s really goddamn happy right now. Jared keeps smiling too, so it’s kind of hypocritical. 

“You should take your glasses off,” he tells Jared, instead of anything meaningful, and Jared rolls his eyes. 

“Wow Jared, that sucks,” Jared says, “you having a crush for so long. Would be nice to get some kind of confirmation that it’s reciprocated but no, actually, I’m just gonna ask you to take your glasses off instead.”

“That was a bad impression,” Evan says. “And you don’t need confirmation, you jerk, you know it is. Stop being obnoxious.”

Jared laughs, the lightest Evan’s ever heard him sound, and sets his glasses on Evan’s bedside table. 

Evan kisses him again, because he can, and at least this time Jared’s glasses aren’t going to be a problem.

It’s not like having a crush on Jared has ever been a big deal for him, really - it made stuff inconvenient, sometimes, and occasionally he worried he was taking advantage, somehow, especially when they started living together, but he coped. Evan was very good at repressing things. He’d assumed nothing would ever come if it, and that was - fine. It was fine. If every now and again he’d get particularly melancholy and end up sitting in bed listening to stupid pining love songs then that was absolutely nobody’s business but his own. 

Having it reciprocated was different.

Evan feels like he’s maybe too happy, in a way, that he’s being silly and should tone it down and stop acting like this is the best thing that’s happened to him in a really long time. It is, to be fair, but maybe he shouldn’t act like it. 

He pulls away from Jared, feels his chest constrict when he does, because Jared looks just as starstruck as he feels.

Evan wonders if maybe things are a little too good to be true, when he remembers how much Jared’s had to drink. Jared can evidently see the realisation hit him, the way his face falls slightly, because he frowns and takes Evan’s hand. 

“You’ve, like. I just. You’ve been drinking,” Evan says, pre-empting Jared’s question. “I don’t know if, maybe.” He doesn’t want to finish the statement. 

Jared, weirdly enough, looks kind of awkward, more than anything else. 

“Uh,” he starts. “I didn’t actually drink that much. Like. at the party I kind of just kept getting drinks, and then not drinking them, and then leaving them places? I had maybe one beer.”

Things make even less sense than they had done before. Jared continues, voice high-pitched the way it gets when he knows he has to say something but really doesn’t want to. 

“I really just wanted to get you out of the house. Like, you seemed kind of sad, and I didn’t want to  _ say  _ that, obviously, but I thought even though you don’t like parties getting out might help, like maybe you could meet someone or something? Now that I think about it it was probably a stupid idea.”

Evan is struck with a rush of affection for Jared.

“It was probably a stupid idea,” he confirms, because he’s not going to pull his punches and Jared’s schemes are generally the worst. “I was just sulking ‘cause you’d been out, like, all week. And I assumed, I thought maybe you’d made a new friend or something, and that would mean we wouldn’t be roomies anymore so I thought, so I was stressed about that.”

“Oh my god,” Jared says, “I was avoiding you because I thought I was being annoyingly clingy, like, I thought you might have needed a break but were too nice to say so to my face.”

How the two of them ever got anywhere with their inability to talk about things like rational, logical human beings was a mystery to Evan.

It’s confirmation, though, that while Jared might not be entirely sober he’s certainly not drunk. That he probably means this, that while he might never have admitted any of it sober he’s not just going to turn around tomorrow and pretend none of it ever happened. Evan’s chest warms at the thought. He smiles down at his hands.

They’re both so dumb, Evan thinks. It’s working out pretty well for them.

**Author's Note:**

> i was meant to be working on my other fics. i know. don't even look at me
> 
> i may write more for this, but it's kind of dependent on how well it's received? so. we'll see
> 
> unbeta'd, feel free to pm me if anything seems wonky! i'm a brit so idk what us college party culture is like. i also don't know what college dorm stuff is like in the us. i plead artistic license. don't think about it too hard.
> 
> title from sleeping with a friend by neon trees. yes, i know it's 2018


End file.
